Home
by Naralanis
Summary: Memory lost, memories regained, yada-yada-yada. Y'all get it.


**I started this randomly and no one stopped me **

* * *

"I'm... I'm sorry."

Maria laughed, even as she wiped tears from her eyes. This woman had no way of knowing, no way of sensing how Carol that was, to apologize for something so completely out of her control. This woman couldn't even know what she was apologizing for, and yet it was such a Carol thing to do.

"What are you apologizing for?" she went for another laugh, trying to hide her pain with humour in a way Carol would have spotted a mile away. For a moment, it looked as if she did, as if she could see through Maria's bullshit the way Carol always did. But Maria took a deep breath, gathering her strength. At least, this time, she got to say a proper goodbye. "Go on, now. Don't you have a whole lotta aliens to save or something?"

Carol smiled a little, though it didn't reach her eyes and it absolutely killed her.

"I'm sorry for... for not remembering," she said, and her voice was so heavy with sadness it made Maria want to lean in close and kiss that sadness away. "I mean, I do remember. Small things, little moments and flashes, but..."

Maria couldn't help but bring her hand to Carol's lips, stopping that spiral before it got out of control. It was mostly for her own benefit—her heart could not take rehashing just how much of her—how much of them—Carol didn't remember. It hurt too much.

"Hush, now. That's not on you. Go on and do that hero thing—they're depending on you now."

Unexpectedly, Maria found herself enveloped by the warmth of Carol's arms, held tight by that fierce embrace she remembered so well. It held her together, and yet it broke her apart at the same time.

"I'll come back. I promise I will."

Maria said nothing. She just held tight; to Carol, to her memories, to her love and her heartbreak.

* * *

"Honey..." Maria was afraid to ask, looking at the mess in the spare bedroom—pictures, clothes, badges and trinkets scattered everywhere, Monica in the middle of the chaos. "What on Earth are you doing?"

Monica never even looked up from the Air Force badges she had been sorting. "What does it look like?" she said, as if she thought her mother was missing the obvious. "I'm getting Auntie Carol's room ready for when she's back."

Maria bit her tongue. She wanted to do the right thing, to tell her daughter not to expect Carol, but to actually say the words out loud... Monica was always so relentlessly hopeful, so fiercely optimistic. How could she tell her that Carol would probably never come back? That even if she did come back from space, she wouldn't be the Carol they knew; their Carol.

So Maria said nothing. Not when Monica framed all the old pictures again; not when she dusted off Carol's old jackets and hanged them oh-so-neatly in her mother's closet, not when she asked her mother every month or so to make sure they had Wheaties in the pantry, because that was Carol's favourite cereal.

She would just look away from the picture frames and ignore the jackets in her closet. She would let Monica eat a bowl of Wheaties every morning and just buy another box when they were out. And still, Monica waited, and still, the gleam in her eyes as she looked to the starry skies above never wavered.

* * *

By her count, it had been nine months, sixteen days since she had left Louisiana. They were far away now, farther than she had ever been as Carol Danvers. Nearly far enough into the vastness of space for Talos and his people to find a new home world—at least according to Lawson's calculations.

By her count, it had been about six weeks since she remembered.

She had no idea what triggered it; what prompted such a flood of memories to come rushing back, seemingly out of nowhere. There had been flashes, before she had even left Earth; flashes of memories she couldn't quite understand, but that felt true, felt like her own even if she could not decipher them.

And then one day, as she tossed and turned in her bunk feeling her shirt stick to her skin with her sweat, one spark started to burn brighter.

It was not quite a fully-formed memory. It was the recollection of a feeling; the feeling of soft skin beneath her fingertips and the creak of an old mattress dipping under the weight of two bodies settling in for sleep. It was the muted whir of a fan and the weight of an arm around her waist.

She woke with a start, drenched in sweat and breathing raggedly. It had to be a dream; it couldn't be a memory—it was too...

Before she could rationalize it further, she knew she was wrong. It was a memory; she knew that instinctively because it felt true, it felt hers and hers alone. It felt like a small piece of a big puzzle being slotted into place.

And then, night after night, it was like another piece began to fit in somewhere. At times there was no rhyme or reason for it—it was as if she were putting together a puzzle in the dark. But then there would be that familiar flash, that spark of light that illuminated her mind just enough for her to get a hint of the full picture. Slowly, that picture became clearer and clearer until it was nearly a photograph in her mind, and she remembered.

She remembered lazy afternoons on the porch, watching a lively little girl chase after dragonflies in the yard. She remembered an overbaked cake with far too many candles on it; she remembered dancing barefoot to a crackling old radio and the clinking of tools in the shed. She remembered the hammock and the fireflies at night, she remembering laughing over beers. She remembered Lieutenant Trouble naming the stars. She remembered Maria.

Talos had noticed something was off, something was different. She had become more aloof, less talkative, as if her energy had dimmed. As if she carried too much weight. She would see her mission to the end; but now the memories made every minute away painful in a way she had never known before. He pretended not to notice at first, but at some point it became too difficult to ignore.

"Go." He said to her one day, sick of her sulking. "We'll be there in a few days, and you've done enough for us. Just go."

She wished she had argued to stay, at least a little. But her heart was not in it.

* * *

The night had been peaceful like most nights, if a little hotter than usual. The fan was going full speed and her windows were wide-open. If they hadn't been, maybe Maria would have missed the blinding light coming from the sky; maybe she would have missed the vision that was Carol Danvers perched on her bedroom window.

"What the..." she squinted against the light Carol still radiated, sitting up in bed and not fully believing she wasn't dreaming. "Carol?"

"Hi." Came Carol's shy voice. "Sorry. I should have knocked." She rapped her knuckles against the siding of the window with an awkward smile. "Knock-knock."

Maria couldn't help but smile. It was so stupid, but it was so unbearably Carol. "You... You're back?"

Carol nodded, swinging her legs over the windowsill so that they now peeked inside Maria's bedroom. She swung them on her perch like a child. "I like what you've done with the place," she commented off-handedly. Maria froze in place as Carol's eyes scanned the room. "The walls used to be yellow, didn't they? I like the blue."

Their gazes met and Maria felt her breath catch in her throat. "You..." she swallowed against the lump in her throat, against the fear and the hope she had been trying to quash for months and months now. "You remember this room?"

"Yeah," Carol nodded. "That bookshelf... if used to be downstairs. It looks good here. And that desk..." she pointed vaguely to the corner of the room, and as she turned to do so Maria saw the glimmer of tears pooling at Carol's eyes, "used to be mine."

Maria felt the heat of tears rolling down her cheeks, and she had to hold back her sobs so she could get the words out. "What... what else do you remember?"

Carol was smiling through her tears. It was Carol her Carol who smiled at her, who stood by her window now, looking shy and lost like a child without a place to come home to. "Everything. I think."

She had come home.

Maria leapt out of bed to hold her tight in her arms. Carol held her face in her gloved hands, wiping gently at the tears that now flowed freely and Maria couldn't bring herself to care. "I remember this room. This bed. I remember this house, I remember Monica. I remember you" she sobbed, and the sound rippled through Maria's own chest, wrenching her heart. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Maria laughed through her tears. They must look so pathetic, she thought, so happy and so sad at the same time, crying and sobbing like babies. She looked into those eyes, really looked at them for the first time in years and saw the Carol she had lost, the Carol she had loved. The Carol she loved, still, with every beat of her heart.

* * *

She didn't know who started it—and frankly, did it even matter? All she knew was that there was no feeling in the world quite like the softness and urgency of Maria's lips against her own. There was nothing like brushing her tears away, like the catharsis of finally kissing her, of touching her, of feeling the heat of her skin against her own.

Her memories flashed and swirled in her mind, mixing themselves to the present as she reacquainted herself with everything she had missed, everything she had forgotten. The warmth of Maria's embrace, the taste of her lips, the strength of her arms as she pulled them both down onto that old bed she now remembered.

She remembered the sounds—of the cicadas outside, of the creaking of the bed, of the gasps Maria released when she remembered to touch her like she used to. She remembered the feel of the sheets and the burning of Maria's nails on her back; the ripples of her muscles and the urgency of her touch, as if she could not get enough of Carol, could not get enough of them.

She saw all of it again, again and again, cherishing every moment and committing everything to a new memory, one strengthened by the old, emboldened by the new. And when Maria gasped beneath her and held her face so tenderly and told her she loved her, Carol let her tears fall, because she was finally, unequivocally, herself.

And she was home.


End file.
